ADOT Blog

You’d be amazed by how much there is to learn just by counting cars (yes, cars…not cards!)… Traffic counts are exactly what the name implies – physical counts of the traffic on a particular road – and ADOT takes them at approximately 1,400 locations around Arizona.

I-10 was closed most of the day and night last Wednesday after two tanker trucks collided near Chandler Boulevard south of downtown Phoenix. For hours, many drivers could see the resulting column of black smoke. Even more people saw footage and photos of the collision’s aftermath on the news and online.

Last month, as part of our Building a Freeway series, we told you about the massive underground support substructures that help give bridges strength. Next up in the series is an important -- but temporary -- structure that’s used as crews build a bridge, tunnel or even a box culvert.

Arizona isn’t known for its harsh, winter weather conditions, but that doesn’t mean we don’t see some considerable snowfall during our colder months.

You might say each ADOT road construction project is a sum of its parts

When a new highway operation technician is hired by ADOT, they’ve got one year to complete some basic training …

The ADOT Research Center Library might not carry any best-sellers, but where else are you going to find a title like, “Benefits of high volume fly ash: new concrete mixtures provide financial, environmental and performance gains”?

You know when you drive under or over a freeway bridge that it’s a massive structure… There are the two abutments (the upright supporting structures at each end that carries the load of the bridge span), there are usually center columns or piers, and, of course, the girders and the bridge deck (the part you actually drive across).

They're typically headed to one of the country’s biggest tourist destinations -- the Grand Canyon. One of the main routes to the popular south entrance happens to be State Route 64, which takes motorists right through the middle of Tusayan (pop. 560). The small town gets a lot of pedestrian and vehicle traffic and understandably there have been some concern related to all the activity on SR 64.

Earlier we told you about the new intercity rail study that’s going to help ADOT examine the possibility of a new transportation link between Phoenix and Tucson. (By the way, there’s still plenty of time to comment and we hope you will!) But, today, we really want to focus on why ADOT conducts studies like this one.